


Strange Country

by mahoni



Category: Bandom, Hush Sound, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-06
Updated: 2010-05-06
Packaged: 2017-10-09 08:31:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahoni/pseuds/mahoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bob and Greta on a day trip across an alien planet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strange Country

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gurrier](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=gurrier).



Brian's message said 'get your asses home asap. don't fuck around sightseeing.'

Patrick's message said 'hacked exo-cartography db. attached is list of cool stuff on your route. get pictures if you stop.'

*

Bob woke up to a finger poking him in the gut.

"Mmph," he said, because he had about sixty pounds of mutt laying on his chest and a mouthful of feathers. The poking didn't stop, so he shifted Dixie down and sideways and swatted at the poking hand. "Stop it. Stop it, I'm awake."

"Finally."

He blinked his eyes open to Greta sitting in the driver's seat smiling at him.

"You're the worst shotgun partner in the known universe, Bryar," she said. "Next time try to stay awake for more than ten seconds after we get going, okay?"

"Next time don't jab me with your pointy finger to wake me up," he said back. "What happened to kisses? Didn't there used to be kissing awake? That was nice."

Greta snorted and reached out to scritch Dixie behind the ears. "Dixie was sleeping on your face. Three-way kissing with a mutt did not appeal to me, oddly enough."

Dixie warble-grunted and pushed her head against Greta's hand. Bob got Dixie shoved down off his chest onto his lap and raised his seat-back. Outside, canyon fog rose and fell in a blurry arch over the crawler, almost obscuring the way station nestled a dozen feet away in the canyon wall.

The terra-data station they'd spent the last half-orbit at sat on top of a mesa that towered over the labyrinth of canyons. The station's placement offered plenty of sun and sky, and a great view of the planet for miles around. Even if the high fog of the wet season did make them feel like they were stranded on an island for a couple months, most of the time the isolation was no issue.

But the only way to get to the station, since inter-atmosphere air traffic wasn't allowed except in emergencies, was through the canyons. It was miles and miles of tunnels carved through the ever-present fog by wind currents from above and air being caught and pushed up through the Swiss-cheese bedrock by the underground rivers below. Until the road climbed out of the canyons, it was a gloomy and featureless drive.

They folded back the crawler doors and climbed out. Dixie loped off immediately, nose twitching, to do her business. Bob and Greta stretched to shake the muscle kinks loose, and headed for the way station.

The air in the canyon felt heavier, smelled dank and earthy. There was an iron tang to it, too, from the minerals that made the underground rivers look like they ran with blood and that striped the canyon walls with thick bands of rusty brown.

The dampness made the touch pad on the way station door feel slimy, and Bob made a face as he pressed his palm to it.

"Yuck," he muttered as the door lock clicked. He scrubbed his hand on his pants leg.

"Wuss," Greta said.

She ducked in to key in their stop record and pick up any messages sent while they were on the first leg of the journey -- just automated weather reports, flora and fauna activity reports, and geographic updates this time. No personal messages.

After that they hit the waste recycler, and locked the place back up. They hadn't been on the road long enough to need to restock supplies, so they left the ration tubs full for whoever came through next.

Greta whistled up Dixie while Bob climbed into the driver's seat. Then Greta and Dixie piled in and they were off again.

Greta lasted maybe five minutes before she dozed off. The canyon drive was insidiously brain-numbing that way.

*

They stopped for first meal once they got out of the canyon.

Climbing the wall up out of the fog, breaking into daylight and all of the color and landscape that came with it, was like coming alive again. Bob could make the comparison from experience, too. He didn't wake Greta up to share the metaphor with her, though. She still got pissy whenever the subject of that time he'd died came up. He'd rather enjoy the sunshine without an accompanying lecture on his bull-headed stupidity.

About a mile out of the canyon a new service path broke off from the main road. According to Patrick's hacked x-c data, there was a lake in that direction being scouted as a potential research site.

It hadn't been cleared as a safe zone yet, but initial reports indicated nothing more dangerous out there than thistle scorpions and the near cliff line, so Bob turned off the main road to check it out.

The service path hadn't been graded yet and was even worse to drive over than the main road. The crawler's shocks compensated for the most part, but it was still a bumpy ride.

Greta blinked awake at the jostling. "What's going on?" she said through a yawn.

"I'm hungry," Bob said. "Thought we'd have a lakeside picnic."

She stretched as well as she could from beneath Dixie's bulk. Her cheeks were pink from being over-warm. With Dixie's complete inability to not sleep on top of any sleeping human in the vicinity, they hardly needed blankets.

She squinted out the window. "Oh," she said after a moment. "Is this one of the places on Patrick's list?"

Bob nodded. Just about then the lake came into view.

The landscape surrounding the canyons on that side was mostly flatlands. Far west, young mountains rose up relatively suddenly, towering high enough for a good portion of the peaks to be perpetually snow-capped. The millennia -worth of seasonal cycles had sent plenty of snowmelt down to the flatlands, slowly carving out strings of lakes connected by wide, shallow rivers. They all eventually poured into the canyons, feeding the underground rivers.

The lake in front of them was several miles across, gleaming in the sunlight like a sheet of mercury. A fine mist clouded the cliff edge where the lake spilled into the canyon.

Fanning out from the lake were squat, lumpy trees, bristly reeds, and the migratory grasslets that exobiology couldn't agree about whether they were flora or fauna. That sort of confusion was a fairly common problem on Borealis.

Bob stopped the crawler a short distance from the lake's edge, before the gravel gave way to the sand bank. Dixie wriggled out of the crawler before Greta got her door all the way open. She bounded down to the lake and plunged in.

"Oh good," Bob said. "I was looking forward to spending all day closed up in a crawler with a wet mutt."

Greta gave him an 'idiot' look and then leaned into the back to grab a couple ration packets. "You probably shouldn't have stopped at a _lake_ for a picnic, then, genius."

Because of the thistle scorpions they had to sit on top of the crawler to eat. Bob tore off a corner of his sandwich filling and tossed it to the gravel to see if he could draw any out. He eventually got bored staring at the hunk of meat mix, though, and nearly missed seeing one.

"Oh." Greta touched his arm and pointed. "There."

One of the small rocks had grown little spiky appendages. They poked out all around its circumference, protruding and retracting as the scorpion rolled itself toward the food. When it got close the back end slowed down while the front end kept going, stretching from mostly round into a short, blobby little segmented creature. It went still for a moment, inches from its prey. Then a couple fore-appendages snapped out to prick the meat.

"Oh no," Bob said. "It killed my sandwich filling."

"At least it wasn't your ass," Greta said.

Bob grimaced. Thistle scorpions couldn't kill anything bigger than fist-sized, but the stings hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.

By the time they were ready to leave Dixie was out of the water, sunning herself on a big rock. She really didn't smell too bad when she got wet -- water mostly rolled off her feathers, and any dampness that clung tended to give her an earthy smell.

Bob still scowled at her when she climbed into his lap in the passenger seat. "Stinky little princess," he told her, rubbing between her shoulder blades.

She opened her mouth and panted happily in his face, which did in fact reek. He had to crack an air vent for a bit after that.

*

After that they stopped off at a new field full of small meteor impact craters; drove nearly an hour out of their way to find a patch of willow bushes that had been recently woven into a nest by one of Borealis' spider-beaver-things; hiked up to a cave full of luminescent crystal moss; and took second meal at the edge of one of the settlement's outlying fruit tree groves. They got lots of stills and animations for Patrick, as directed.

Per regulations they also hit all of the way stations on their route. About halfway through their journey they started getting personal messages from Brian. They were all variations on 'i told you not to screw around out there; get your asses home.'

Bob sent one back that said 'keep your pants on, short stuff. we'll be home for fourth meal.'

"It's Schechter's job to worry," Greta said, reading the message over Bob's shoulder.

"Yeah. And he's fucking good at it," Bob said, adding an angry-face emoticon to the end of the message before sending it.

*

Their last stop was an actual, certified rest stop, with a scenic overlook and tables. There was also a little info post that would call up an interactive holovid that told about the area and what lay beyond, in the direction Bob and Greta had come from.

Most of the settlement's residents stayed local -- they were the administrators, the farmers, the physicians, teachers, business and government agents, construction workers, and other necessary personnel, plus their families. Info posts were set up all around the settlement for them, partly to entertain with anecdotes, but mostly to provide warnings. There were plenty of dangerous things, and things no one entirely understood yet that might be dangerous, that a person couldn't help occasionally tripping over on Borealis.

The warning at that rest stop was about the arch-trees that wandered through the valley and up and down the scattered hillocks all around that area. Arch-trees were big plants that grew to about ten feet, and then drooped over sideways and grew the rest of their length in a graceful arch. They sprouted little branches that grew in arches, too. At the tips of the trees and all of their branches, big, flat leaves grew. The plants were all in shades of purpley-blue, gorgeous against the silvery earth.

Walking through arch-tree forests was like walking through a labyrinth. The plate-like leaves made it look like it would be easier to walk over them. Which it would be, until one of the trees whipped up and launched that person into the air.

One theory was that it was a defense mechanism, to keep larger nesting creatures or plant-eating creatures from getting comfortable long enough to settle in or do any damage.

Another theory was that it might have been some kind of cooperative evolution between the arch-trees and some of the glider animal species. The gliders climbed up, stretched out their wings, and were launched into the air; once up there, they swooped around eating the flying insects that were too small to trigger the launch reaction but could decimate an arch-tree pretty quickly if enough of them could get to one.

The point the info-post made, though, was "don't be an idiot and climb the damn trees, or they will kill you." Though the narrative said it nicer than that.

Bob and Greta ate third meal on top of the crawler again, this time so they could watch Dixie play. She was from one of the glider species, a weird mix of mammal-lizard-bird that confounded geneticists (like most things on Borealis still did).

As Dixie ran toward the nearest tree, she unfolded. Her ground form was good-sized compared to an Earth-style dog, but she was _huge_ when she went into glider mode.

Her barrel-chested torso was mostly folded-up wings; they unbent, unrolled, fanned out to a thin membrane over a frame of narrow, hollow bones, covered in tiny feathers. Her wingspan was a good ten feet.

Her stumpy tail rolled out and split into a trio of guide-wings. Her arrow-shaped head lost most of its width to a huge fan of feathers.

Bob snorted; Greta elbowed him.

"What," he said. "She looks kind of ridiculous like that."

Her three big, soft eyes didn't shrink, and looked enormous on her thinned-out face. Also, when she got excited about flying, her tongue lolled out in a long, curly whip from her mouth.

It totally looked idiculous.

"She's beautiful," Greta said. "Don't even try to pretend she isn't."

As they watched, Dixie leaped onto a big leaf. The tree snapped up like a broken rubber band, sending her soaring up into the air. Her wings caught the wind, and she didn't plane out until she'd grown small against the sky. Then she floated, making lazy circles beneath the blue sky and the white day moons, scarlet feathers flashing bright.

"Well, yeah," Bob said. "But also a little bit ridiculous."

*

The rest of the trip went across settlement roadways. All they had to do was switch on the crawler's guide sensors and plug in the destination coordinates. The crawler shifted to autopilot and did all the driving for them.

They spent most of that leg of the journey listening to music and playing cards or video games. It was comfortable; even though they'd spent the last half-orbit with no company but each other, Bob wasn't the least bit sick of Greta.

He knew he was lucky. Compatibility tests were crap, and people still went stir crazy or ended up hating each other, or even occasionally killed each other, on long, isolated missions despite high compatibility ratings.

But that was the other part of his job that Brian was good at -- tossing out compatibility ratings and using his own judgment to pair up his scientists. As far as Bob was concerned, Brian had nailed it with him and Greta.

He was pretty sure she thought so too.

At least, the way she smiled at him after she killed his entire fleet in "Star System Domination"; kept smiling when she switched the game off; and smiled all the way from the driver's seat and onto his lap made him think she liked him pretty well too.

There wasn't a lot of room in the crawler, but Bob slid the seat back as far as it could go, and tilted it so they could stretch out a little. Then all he could do was use his hands; he had to let her do most of the work. Neither of them minded.

Dixie sat in the driver's seat, watching them with her head cocked and her feathery ears perked. They took their time, though, and eventually she got bored, curled up and went to sleep.

*

The science admin building was quiet by the time they rolled in. The sky had darkened, and Borealis' sister planet Aurora had risen over the horizon, filling half the sky with her rainbow glow.

Greta grabbed their packs and headed upstairs to their apartment to drop them off. Dixie padded along with her.

When she said "Meet up with you in the cafeteria" over her shoulder, Bob gave her a mock salute. Then he went down the hall to Brian's office to check in.

Brian was in a meeting, so Bob knocked on the doorframe.

Brian flipped his holo-meeting shades up and blinked at him until his eyes adjusted.

"About damn time," he said. He keyed in an exit message on his data pad and tossed the shades onto his desk. Rubbing his eyes tiredly, he said, "How the fuck did you guys manage to turn a three quarter cycle trip into a full cycle trip?"

Bob held up the camera. "Sightseeing tour," he said. "Requested by Stump."

Brian dropped his hands. "Did he hack cartography's database again?" He groaned. "Motherfucker. It'll probably take them a few weeks to figure it out, but when they do I am going to get my ass chewed."

"When's Pete due back?" Bob said.

Pete was Patrick's usual partner. He'd gotten sick and had to go off-world to recuperate for a few months.

That was the official story, anyway. Scientific geniuses weren't always the most stable people, and being so many light-years from home could get to a person. But Brian's team took care of their own. Pete needed to be out here, exploring this planet and making discoveries. They would make sure he came back.

In the meantime, Patrick was worried and bored. When Patrick got worried and bored, he tended to distract himself by either hacking highly encrypted data storage units or tinkering with his experimental AI programs. Neither of those things ever ended well.

"He's on his way," Brian said. "Thank god. Transport comes in next week."

Brian put his work machine to sleep and followed Bob into the hall.

"What's the special in the cafeteria today?" Bob said.

"Roast beast. Of some sort." Brian shot him a look. "What do you care? It'll be the first real food you've had in ages."

"Yeah. I just thought it would be fun to start drooling before I got there," Bob said. Not really; he'd just been making conversation. But now he actually was fighting the urge to drool. "I fucking love roast beast."

Brian snorted. "Leave some for the rest of us."

"Only if you're fast enough, loser."

***


End file.
